maybe, but even before that one might consider <why> hiv/aids has spread more among homosexuals than among heterosexuals in western countries like the us.

of course, there are different kinds of reasons, but here's a pair i think is important:

1) real fear of social and moral condemnation (still) makes it hard to live openly as homosexual (indeed, in our recent past it could cost you your life)

2) living in a long, faithful relationship is more than difficult if it must be done in secrecy - in practical terms it's impossible

if the society makes it very hard for you to be in a long-lived relationship then you will have more, shorter ones instead. since this applies to those you meet too, the snowball just keeps rolling.

now, using a <consequence> of the barriers of leading normal lives that homosexuals have suffered as a reason to <uphold> the same barriers in the future, appears more than a little inconsistent to me.

With your proclivities, you might have presumed that not all academic journals are born equal. Check your sources. The first warning sign that the Italian Journal of Anatomy and Embryology is not quite on par with the New England Journal of Medicine is the home page, which does not advertise an impact factor. Fear not, I found:

Impact Factor 2009 - 0.375 [ http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsea... ]

You are not the first on this site to quote junk journals. I hate to exert myself more than I need, so thanks for the opportunity to recycle some old jokes. For comparison, we have that sterling academic journal

Restaurator 0.375

Just by the way, the lead author of the "article" you cite is Peter Duesberg, a well-known pariah in the HIV field. Duesberg still disbelieves that the cause of AIDS is HIV, despite overwhelming and very objective evidence to the contrary [ http://www.avert.org/hiv-causes-aid... ].

All the individual and social goods that marriage can bring in regards to heterosexual marriages also come with homosexual marriages.>

I am affirming that the ending of discrimination against gays in regards to marriage rights would improve the moral climate of a nation.

<Are you denying there is such a thing as morality? >

No.

<Are you affirming your understanding of morality is more valid than mine?>

I affirm a non-subjective "morality" that is a tentative, revisable, non-absolute set of ethical judgements based on experience and reason; and I affirm that such morality is far more objective than one based on personal subjective interpretations of certain religious texts.

<OCF: I think this is ridiculous. Small subsets? What % of AIDS cases are suffered by homosexuals?>

1)The Hoggs study DID deal with a small subset of people, specifically a group in Vancouver, Canada. I suggest you read the study. I also suggest you read Hogg's own rejection of anti-gay groups using his study in a misleading fashion to further their agenda:

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/conte...

<Over the past few months we have learnt of a number of reports regarding a paper we published in the International Journal of Epidemiology on the gay and bisexual life expectancy in Vancouver in the late 1980s and early 1990s.1 From these reports it appears that our research is being used by select groups in US2 and Finland3 to suggest that gay and bisexual men live an unhealthy lifestyle that is destructive to themselves and to others. These homophobic groups appear more interested in restricting the human rights of gay and bisexuals rather than promoting their health and well being....

...if we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since 1996. As we have previously reported there has been a threefold decrease in mortality in Vancouver as well as in other parts of British Columbia.4

It is essential to note that the life expectancy of any population is a descriptive and not a prescriptive mesaure.5 Death is a product of the way a person lives and what physical and environmental hazards he or she faces everyday. It cannot be attributed solely to their sexual orientation or any other ethnic or social factor.

...Overall, we do not condone the use of our research in a manner that restricts the political or human rights of gay and bisexual men or any other group. >

2) More importantly, the issue was whether <homosexuality per se> caused increased mortality rates, not whether <hiv/aids/dangerous behavior> caused increased morality rates. Do you understand that point?

<OCF: And the whole world, forever, has been wrong?>

A valid point.

A valid point.>

what we <call "him"> is somewhat irrelevant. what rights s/he gets from living in such a relationship <does> matter. again, i suggest that one needs to sort out the relationship between state and church. it's not a simple issue, for lots of reasons.

my guess is that ocf would <not> be happy if god and christianity were clearly separated from the state, the state stopped talking about "marriage" and adopted another term with similar content (e.g. "partnership") and administered the required legislation around it - while the church got "marriage" back, free to discuss internally who should be married and who shouldn't.

HIV/AIDS in Africa is unfortunately very true. The growth of the population in most regions would be even larger if the population of many countries had not been decimated. I know first hand, having been living on a medical compound in Central Africa in the 80's, and having many contacts in Africa who have reported deaths of a shocking number of those I knew or worked with.

The medical people on the ground there are not stupid by any means, can diagnose as well as anyone, can read the symptoms, can get the bloodwork, etc.

Its a sad fact, not a hyped up excuse to wrench more money out of the first world economies (although some may use it that way).

Its that kind of epidemic that provides the moral groundwork for a new culture, which has happened in many African nations. Those that have survived are much more monogamous, much less tolerant of deviant behavior, use more protection, etc. etc. etc. And in those areas, of course, HIV/AIDS is falling dramatically.

Africa is a textbook case of where our morals in human society--led by some sort of surviving "priest class"--have been handed down from.

The spread of disease in the homosexual community in the West is another marker, but denied by too many on the left for having any significant behavioral/moral meaning for humanity. The denial is sometimes as extreme as their acceptance of anthropogenic climate change.

Don't join them.

so, pinnedpiece, which action do you think will improve the hiv/aids situation among homosexuals?

1) stronger condemnation of homosexuals and a clear no to gay "marriage" or anything else giving them similar social rights as heterosexual couples

or

2) more public acceptance for same-sex partners, giving the same rights as married couples have to homosexual people that choose to live in formal(*), stable partnerships

which alternative do you think will help more people and save more lives?

I am not going to participate in that discussion, sorry. Nor do I expect you to participate in a new topic that I hereby introduce:

===Aborting Homosexuals===

As the human genome gets more completely mapped and understood, something is very likely to happen, if what the gay rights promoters have been insisting is true: "We are born this way."

If a marker for homosexuality is found, we will be faced with a crisis in the following ways:

1) Mothers will want to know about it, same as they want to know if their child has Down's syndrome, which is also detectable. Same as Chinese families need to know if their only child is going to be a girl.

2) When (I surmise) a majority of women begin to have these fetuses aborted, a political furor will ensue.

3) Either one or both of these scenarios will come to pass:

3A) Gay rights groups will get legislation passed that prohibits tests for homosexuality, or informing the mother about the results.

3B) Gay fetuses will get extra legislative protection, as gays have already obtained in hiring, military, assault and battery, and many other legal areas. Doctors will be sued out of practice by ACLU or some such if it is proven they have aborted a gay fetus.

4. This protection will not carry over for any other type of genetic marker, or even "regular" fetuses (feti?).

5. A black market industry will develop, possibly in Mexico....

Lawyers at any rate will have a whole new fertile area to make money in, so hooray for them.

As you can correctly assume, I have strong opinions on that as well as many other topics, but I consider this to be "polite" company in the sense that if I <would not> voice certain opinions in the company of my gay friends, I'm not going to voice them here either. (I am/have been in the performing arts.)

Anything else I say I'll say anywhere and everywhere to anyone. But I have no desire to make enemies on those particular grounds....one way or the other.

We can be enemies over Obama, though. In fact, I HAVE LOST FRIENDS over Obama. (I tell myself I don't and won't miss idiots as friends.)

Homosexuals are not normally idiots, not necessarily stupid, and sometimes not even liberals. And quite often they have great insight, creative outlook, or some other excellent quality.

Therefore I reserve some of my opinions to avoid conflict. I can get quite angry, however, that on occasions gay-right in-your-face types can't be as civil.

your implementation of it becomes a little more hard-to-grasp for me when accompanied by your hypothetical genetic gay marker scenario/discussion, since it would seem to invite comments from you that *again* would reveal opinions of yours that you don't want to share here, according to yourself.

If you can just figure out which pair will hook up during the course of the book, I'd say you've got yourself the beginnings of a super "pitch" on the way!

http://www.hollywoodpitch.com/

One tough decision will be: gay tryst or straight....how about both.

You're sure of that? >

The AVERT site is an excellent source of AIDS data. (I have not heard of them before.) The page [ http://www.avert.org/hiv-aids-afric... ] gives a verbal overview. The page [ http://www.avert.org/africa-hiv-aid... ] gives some African AIDS statistics, but homosexuality does not merit a separate category. In fact, for African AIDS statistics, I have never seen a separate homosexual category, perhaps because heterosexual transmission dominates so completely there. Percentages in the category for women (near 50% of cases) support this hypothesis.